DE's 3rd Floor Exhibition Space
May 2022: Silky Shoemaker
Silky Shoemaker is a performer, visual artist, and organizer based in SF CA. She makes work that explores the absurdity and profundity of queer life thru painting, curation, and slapstick melodrama. Her work has been seen in such illustrious venues as ArtHouse Austin, the Warhol Museum, The Sculpture Center (Queens) and punk houses throughout the USA. She is one third of the performance collective Shaboom! and also dances across the world with notorious post gender punk Christeene. Silky is the founder of GAYBIGAYGAY Music Fest and once curated the world’s first Gay Wax Museum.
Queer Icons 2022: These new works are part of an ongoing series titled “Queer Icons” that I started in 2019.
“Queer Icons” is my effort to uncover and uplift the stories of our cultural ancestors. I want to give presence to subjects who have been underrepresented in the “gay canon”: queer people of color, the gender variant, those who’s lives were cut short due to the AIDS epidemic, and people who’s queerness was overshadowed by their historical context.
I chose these 6 subjects out of a nearly endless pool of contenders. They stand out to me for their contributions to society and culture as artists and activists whose work challenged the status quo and made new worlds possible.
I hope some viewers will be delighted to recognize familiar faces in the bunch and that some will learn about new and amazing icons of our ever unfurling history.
